Knowing
by Following
Summary: A small moment with the guys during the war. Slash, 3x2


We all knew they were lovers. Maxwell didn't sleep in his bed any more. It was made now in the mornings, a sure sign it hadn't been slept in.  
I caught him leaving Barton's room in the morning one day. He paused in the hall and raised an eyebrow at me. I raised one back. And that was that.  
Yuy gave his partner these confused looks sometimes, lost at what brought him to Barton. He had a picture of Relena on the lap top, which Maxwell found and took great pride in printing out and having framed. I thought Yuy was going to kill him.  
But that picture now sits on his dresser. Relena cleans their small apartment with him herself, no staff or cleaners coming into their small sweet home on the ocean. She marvels that picture made it through the war. No one informs her that every one of us saved it from various compromised safe houses for him, that it traveled in every Gundam's small cargo hold.  
Yuy understood his own silent attraction. She's beautiful and shining and he wants to make a better world for her. He wants to keep her safe. He wants to shove her away.  
He watched his partner, his best friend, sneak out of their room at night, and he wondered. He accepted it, but he wondered.  
Winner was of course happy for them— but he wondered. I don't think Winner's ever so much as thought of another man that way, much less one of us in the war torn paradise we tried to make our lives in. I think he asked Barton about it. Probably recieved a shrug in response.  
But we all knew.  
This morning, mission free and exhausted, we were lying around the safe house. It was Barton's turn to cook. He'd gotten up and gone into the kitchen a few minutes ago, intending to cook some ungodly French thing, I expect. Another attempt at cooking by my associates that I would have to suffer through. Yuy sprawled over an easy chair watching some old movie, the Perfect Soldier gone at last. Quatre was fixing some leather armour. I was watching Yuy's film. Maxwell was in the chair opposite Yuy, as engrossed in his comic as Yuy was in the film, their posture or lack there of identical. You'd think we were 'normal' boys taking a day off.  
I say I was watching the movie. Mostly I was watching them. Maxwell and Yuy in their identical poses. Winner pouring over that leather and growling to himself. It amused me. Our poor little rich boy has survival skills just as functional as the rest of us, but when it came to the small domestic tasks necessary to keep his kit running he was lost. Sewing in particular evaded him time and time again. Yuy had an eye on him as well, waiting with amusement for the point when Winner was willing to give up and hand the leather over to him.  
"#$#!!" shot out from the kitchen in Barton's deep rich voice and it's seldom I've seen all of us move that fast. The last safe house had been compromised before we wanted to leave. I don't think we had any intention of leaving this one yet.  
Maxwell was in the lead, Winner behind him, Yuy and I pulling guns before we stepped into the kitchen.  
Do you know what surprised me at the time? Maxwell's cold face. His laughing maniacal glee was gone. He was deadly as I've seldom seen him before or after.  
Barton was standing at the sink, running cold water over a cut gushing blood on his hand. Maxwell moved toward him, and he looked up at us in shock.  
"Trowa, what happened? Winner asked. He put away his gun nervously, feeling somewhat foolish, I think.  
Barton shook his head and held up the cut. "Gashed myself," he said calmly, as though he'd never sworn, as though no sound had emerged from the man I'd seen take shrapnel low in his chest and stay as silent as the twilight sky.  
Maxwell's knife disappeared somewhere and he grinned and moved toward the cupboard we kept our first aid kit in. "We don't need the protein that bad, Tro." He found bandages and moved toward Barton. "Just toss some salad together and we'll be great."  
He lifted Barton's hand and began to put the bandage on. He was so careful, it shocked me. He took a long look at his handiwork. "Better?"  
"Mmm," said Barton. He caught Maxwell's face in his uninjured hand, raised his eyes from the cut.  
I don't what he read there. I don't know why he buried that hand in Maxwell's hair and leaned forward to whisper something to him. Maxwell rubbed his cheek against Barton's and put one hand on his chest and Barton let him go. They stood there for a long moment, then Maxwell turned to put away the first aid kit.  
"How 'bout I give you a hand?" he suggested cheerfully. "I don't know about the rest of the guys, but I'm up for dinner without cannibalism tonight. You can bleed on breakfast."  
"Alright," said Barton.  
They made dinner. Due to Maxwell's civilizing influence, it was a meal made of recognizable vegetables rather than bizarrely sauteed meats with bits of herbs. Winner was disappointed. He likes that French nonsense Barton cooks up.  
We all knew they were lovers, but I think that was the point when they figured it out. 


End file.
